Gardner's bestselling first novel, Crisis, featuring the fictional SBS officer-turned MI6 operative Luke Carlton and a ruthless Colombian drug lord, was published in June 2016.

Crisis: the action-packed Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller Crisis: the action-packed Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller

Against all expectations, he survived and, in 2006, published his acclaimed and bestselling memoir, Blood and Sand. On June 6, in the year 2004, he was shot six times by al-Qaeda sympathizers, and his cameraman (who was Irish and was named Simon Cumbers) was killed. If I am having to deal with agony in my legs or am exhausted and have to lie down, I can't take part in the children's games, which is tough. He has suffered so much (eight months in hospital, 12 operations, his body one great wound) that, reading his splendid autobiography Blood and Sand, I tell him, I felt like biting on a rag during the chapter describing his rehabilitation. He has also fully taken on board the P7 mantra of the units – and the ‘teeth’ regiments which provide most of their manpower – Prior Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance – and has produced an absolutely irresistible debut: smart, authentic, and always entertaining.

His hero is Luke Carlton, an ex-Special Boat Service Commando, now under short-term contract, as are a select handful of former SAS and SBS men, to MI6 for missions where intelligence gathering is not alone enough and may need muscle and combat skills to back it up. Full of tomorrow’s headlines, Crisis is a nerve-shredding thriller with an intimate knowledge of the world it portrays. We arrive in the British Telecom building where I lose Gardner to a glass lift, but not before an old man has come forward to congratulate him. During an expedition to Papua New Guinea, they sought the elusive birds-of-paradise (a life-long ambition of Gardner's as an experienced birdwatcher), including the King of Saxony.

Crisis By Frank Gardner | Used | 9780857503169 - Wob Crisis By Frank Gardner | Used | 9780857503169 - Wob

Educated at Saint Ronan's School, and Marlborough College, Gardner was pushed by his teachers into taking up biathlon, which enabled him to travel to Austria to train with the British Army biathlon team. After, he would still do some reports from the field, but usually throws in his comments from one of the BBC’s studios.After his spinal injury and having attended a training course for disabled skiers, he resumed skiing using a sitski, a device that allows disabled people to ski while seated. Often described as coldly calculating, like the chess player and judo fighter that he is, his speech on Monday resembled more that of an angry dictator than a shrewd strategist.